The Sculpture Explore The Engravings

The ANZAC legend was borne from the experiences and recollections of the men and women who served in the Gallipoli campaign.

The memorial highlights a diversity of memoirs expressed by individuals from both Australia and Turkey. Prominently engraved around the edges of the granite base are words taken from two eminent figures – Charles Bean, an official Australian war correspondent with the AIF troops, who articulates a nation’s pride in the bravery of its fallen men – and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president, who offers words of comfort to the mothers who lost their sons at Gallipoli. Such sentiments are overlaid with extracts taken from epitaphs, letters, diaries, speeches and tombstones from Anzac and Turkish soldiers and their families, highlighting the personal perspectives from the war. They represent the many voices – soldiers, commanders, mothers, fathers, poets and observers, all of them so sadly affected by the Gallipoli campaign and the First World War.